Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/247

Rh from the Macedonian empire to that of Rome, and through Rome passed on to France, to Spain, to Germany, to England, thence to America, and so on around the globe.

But every great man is a product of his time and of times preceding his own; and he works in conditions and upon materials that he finds round about him. It was the same with the Founder of Christianity. Working upon the human spirit, He gave new direction and deeper force to feelings immanent in man. The career of Jesus and its consequences furnish perhaps the most remarkable of all illustrations and proofs of the unity of history; for herein is the most effective force yet brought into action for broadening the spirit of man and linking humanity together in a single chain.

The appearance of a great man upon any important theater of action will start great changes, will accelerate every movement about him, will give force and direction to unorganized activities, and hurry forward to results the tendencies of the age or time. Causes in potent operation to this day were set in motion when Caesar was appointed governor of Gaul. For comparison it may well be said that the enlargement of the world's historical horizon by the expeditions beyond the Alps was as much an event in the world's history as the exploration of America by European discoverers. To the narrow circle of Mediterranean states were added the peoples of Central and Northern Europe, the dwellers on the Baltic and North seas, and those of the British Islands; to the Old World was added a new one, which thenceforth was influenced by the old, and influenced it in turn. But for Caesar and his triumphs ever the north, which put off for a long period, the descent of the Northern multitudes upon the South, historians of first repute assure us that our civilization would hardly have stood in any more intimate relation to the Romano-Greek than to the Indian and Assyrian culture. That